2020ok  Directory of FREE Online Books and FREE eBooks

Free eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Reference > Criticism & Interpretation > New Testament > A Radical Jew: Paul And The Politics Of Identity

A Radical Jew: Paul And The Politics Of Identity

by Daniel Boyarin


Download Book
(Respecting the intellectual property of others is utmost important to us, we make every effort to make sure we only link to legitimate sites, such as those sites owned by authors and publishers. If you have any questions about these links, please contact us.)


link 1



About Book

From Kirkus Reviews
A markedly contemporary study that navigates the New Testament scholar past the perils of Pauline theology. Boyarin (Talmudic Culture/Univ. of Calif., Berkeley; Carnal Israel, not reviewed) attempts to ``reclaim Paul as an important Jewish thinker.'' He goes on to establish this primary apostle as a Hellenized Jew whose Platonic sensibility calls for a universal sameness that negates the divisions separating Jew from Gentile and man from woman. The disembodied spirituality of Platonic dualism allows females (especially virgins) to be equal to men under Christ, and allows an uncircumcised Christian of any gender to ``circumcise the foreskin of her [sic] heart'' with Hebrew Bible commandments universalized and allegorized. Boyarin does not glibly valorize Paul as a champion of feminism and an opponent of Jewish exclusivist chauvinism. After crediting Paul for being a radical social critic, the author makes clear how the apostle's pre-Marxist universalism too easily slid into violent coercion in the later, blood-soaked chapters of Christian history. Boyarin analyzes the work of many Christian scholars in concluding that Lutheran misinterpretations of Paul allow us to consider the apostle to be far more antagonistic to Jews and Judaism than he really was. The benefit of Boyarin's Jewish defense against hermeneutical Christian anti-Semitism is tempered by his disdain for a Judaic ``tendency towards contemptuous neglect for human solidarity'' and his anti- Zionism (``modern Jewish statist nationalism has been...very violent and exclusionary''). Sometimes he confuses Christian ``salvation'' theology with Jewish belief, and he fails to find any similarity between Pauline Platonism and the allegorical and universal levels of Torah laws. The final chapter digresses to a personal view of the ``essentialist/social constructionist dichotomy,'' but the book does end with ample notes and bibliography. A rewarding read for students of Christian theology willing to be challenged by today's multicultural, poststructuralist, postfeminist scholarship. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Daniel Boyarin turns to the Epistles of Paul as the spiritual autobiography of a first-century Jewish cultural critic. What led Paul--in his dramatic conversion to Christianity--to such a radical critique of Jewish culture?
Paul's famous formulation, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, no male and female in Christ," demonstrates the genius of Christianity: its concern for all people. The genius of Judaism is its validation of genealogy and cultural, ethnic difference. But the evils of these two thought systems are the obverse of their geniuses: Christianity has threatened to coerce universality, while ethnic difference is one of the most troubled issues in modern history.
Boyarin posits a "diaspora identity" as a way to negotiate the pitfalls inherent in either position. Jewishness disrupts categories of identity because it is not national, genealogical, or even religious, but all of these, in dialectical tension with one another. It is analogous with gender: gender identity makes us different in some ways but not in others.
An exploration of these tensions in the Pauline corpus, argues Boyarin, will lead us to a richer appreciation of our own cultural quandaries as male and female, gay and straight, Jew and Palestinian--and as human beings.

From the Inside Flap
"A splendid piece of work: learned, witty, wide-ranging in its understanding of religion as a cultural phenomenon, passionate in its concern for the ethical implications of our reading of ancient texts."--Richard B. Hays, author of Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul

"Boyarin's bracing argument turns us into strangers to ourselves, as the first century comes uncannily close to the twenty-first century. The importance of this stimulating and controversial book lies in promoting an awareness of the possibilities of solidarity, justice, and liberation in the time of the culture wars."--Homi K. Bhabha, author of The Location of Culture

"Brilliant, thought-provoking and outrageous (a compliment in my lexicon). Demonstrates very clearly the merits of a Jewish look at Paul (that is, a Jew looking at Paul in his Jewishness)."--Adele Reinhartz, McMaster University

"Boyarin has mastered the literature of Paul in amazing detail and devastating understanding. His analytic skills are honed to perfection on the stone of critical theory. As a Jewish reader of a foundational Christian text, he has explained to Christians the power of Paul's thinking for Christians."--Burton L. Mack, author of Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins

"This book is a polemic for difference based on genealogical memory as a creative force in the broadest human solidarity. In that sense it is a moral or philosophical tractate, what Boyarin calls cultural criticism, as well as an analysis of Paul's position. I have been greatly informed by a reading of this study."--Antoinette Wire, author of The Corinthian Woman Prophets

"Boyarin weighs in with his usual éclat . . . reading the Epistles as if they were contributions to contemporary debates over the issues of feminism, multiculturalism, Zionism, identity politics, and deconstruction, and reading these as if they were germane to an understanding of the Epistles. The book is a tour de force of PoMo criticism, and required reading for anyone interested in the history of religion, Judaism, Christianity, Western culture, 'Orientalism,' identity politics, feminism--and the list could go on."--Hayden White, author of Metahistory

From the Back Cover
"A splendid piece of work: learned, witty, wide-ranging in its understanding of religion as a cultural phenomenon, passionate in its concern for the ethical implications of our reading of ancient texts." (Richard B. Hays, author of Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul)

About the Author
Daniel Boyarin is Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (California, 1993).

Comments

SEND A COMMENT

PLEASE READ: All comments must be approved before appearing in the thread; time and space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to the article, use appropriate language and are not attacking the comments of others.

Message (please, no HTML tags. Web addresses will be hyperlinked):

Related Free eBooks

Related Tags

DIGG This story   Save To Google   Save To Windows Live   Save To Del.icio.us   diigo it   Save To blinklist
Save To Furl   Save To Yahoo! My Web 2.0   Save To Blogmarks   Save To Shadows   Save To stumbleupon   Save To Reddit